Scratch Brewing: Where Earth Meets Mash
It was only natural that Marika Josephson, Aaron Kleidon and Ryan Tockstein gravitated toward each other. Among the home brewers who gathered weekly in a tiny, now-defunct bar in the southern Illinois town of Carterville, these three shared a vision: “to make a regional product people will drive for – an indigenous beer that tasted unlike anything else,” Kleidon recalled. To make that dream a reality, these founders of Scratch Brewing Co., took to the land, searching for what existed long before cities, towns and even farms: all that is wild.
Scratch beers, whether you call them farmhouse, estate or simply homegrown, are unlike any other. Their path to the glass starts long before they enter the Scratch brewhouse in Ava, Ill., and each route is unique. The journey may begin where the prairie turns to woods or where the river meets the banks. Made from foraged and homegrown ingredients, Scratch beers are an expression of time and place in liquid form. Here’s what it means to be made from Scratch.
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